CB57001 - a 1989 survivor

As mentioned in the opening article here the first cars of a series rolling off the assembly line find use as test mules for various purposes.
The very first E31 receiving a VIN number was CB00000, built on July 28, 1989.

This car can be imagined to have looked like depicted below:

Some others have been used up in the compulsory crash tests:

CB00000 and, according to a source at the BMW Dingolfing plant, most/all of the remaining cars produced in 1989 never made it to a customer but were rather destroyed/dismantled/recycled at the end of their test cycles. As it seems eventually it is cheaper to just scrap the test mules than retrofitting all those tiny things that change during the course of the pre-series production and application of the final touches.

BMW runs a facility near Munich called the RDZ (Recycling and Disassembly Centre) where for the last 20 odd years prototypes found their untimely end in a box like shape.

1989 saw no more than 67 8ers leave the production line of which most, not unexpectedly were destined for the European LHD market. The table below shows the complete picture for the 1989 production:

Some of those cars were used as "type approval" cars for certain markets, others are known to have received equipment where further development was abandoned prior to the start of the series production. As an example 4 of those 67 cars listed above received an option S260 Tyre Pressure Control (TPC) which indeed was announced to be available for the E31 in contemporary marketing material but seemingly was not fit for use back then. It made its first appearance in the E38 7-series and E39 5-series and many of those cars were plagued by malfunctions of the TPC.

Up until late the oldest car known to be on the road was CB00105, built on Feb. 23rd, 1990 for the German market. Mass production with an increasing output only started in March 1990 and reached its peak in Autum 1990 where more than 60 cars a day came off the assembly line. Below is an overview of the total production figures between July 1989 and May 1990.

I was taken by surprise by a new registration at 8Coupe.com (did YOU register?) in August this year originating from the UK and claiming the ownership for CB57001. Looking at the 1989 production table above it soon becomes clear that this VIN belongs to the latter of two cars built for the UK market in 1989 and, according to the rules outlined above, very likely would have been a candidate to end up diced.

The factory build sheet for CB57001 is shown below:

CB57001 was built on Nov. 24, 1989 and in the production sequence for all 8ers this is #41 of 30621.

Having received pictures of the car by way of the owner it became a certainty that indeed a lone survivor of the 1989 pre-series production is still amongst the living:

The car was first registered in the UK in October 1992 - nearly 3 years after its build date.

Strange enough the production date is indicated as 1992, which it very clearly is not according to the factory build data. It can be assumed that the car was sitting around, possibly only being used for a dealer presentation in the UK in 1989 and with no place to go from there. At some stage a decision must have been made not to scrap the car but rather sell it to someone not knowing about its prototypical history.

Did they rebuild the car to reflect the state of the art in the series production of the E31?
To find out one needs to know what might have been different pre-series and fortunately a few years ago a German technical university rid themselves of a prototypical specimen they had collecting dust for near two decades. This car, CB00044, built on Dec. 19, 1989 and #57 in sequence was never released to the public. It also did not have that all important VIN in the bodywork just underneath the right wiper - it was cut out!
Some other things showed that the car was a little different to what became a common sight later on:

CB57001 also seemingly does not have a VIN where it ought to be. The owner spent much time looking for it but was unable to find that factory marking. It was, nevertheless available on one of the stick on tags that are widespread in the engine compartment.

Unfortunately CB57001 did not sport the prototypical round exhaust pipes anymore. Considering that the car has seen near/in excess of 20 yrs of service this is not really surprising though.

It did however, have the same "BMW-less" door sills that can be seen above for CB00044.

Below: comparisons of "pre-series" vs. earliest other "series" specimen on file.

Left: CB57001, right: CB57008 (built Oct 5, 1990)

...and seemingly also the same radiator cover which has a lot less fixtures than we have come to know from our cars. One can also see that the washer bottle has a weird shape and seems to be lacking the larger pump for the headlight washers (which are installed).
Left: CB57001, right: CB57010 (built Jul 26, 1990)

I am certain that there will be dozens more parts that somehow got changed past the production date of CB57001. To find out all one would need is a second M70 E31 and a few pairs of keen eyes.

So if you ever come across a Glacier blue E31 give it a wave. With some likelihood you might have met the oldest E31 known surviving on the planet.
The owner of the car is living near Sheffield and currently has no plans to sell his car.

Cheers
Reinhard

Dave
The final ECE LHD CSi is CC02181, built Oct. 30, 1996 and reportedly has made a move towards either Romania or Bulgaria in 2009 having been advertised for a long time and for a more than sufficient amount of money to part with.

The one before that, CC02180 was imported to the United States more than a decade ago.

The location of CC88190, the final RHD CSi is unknown. The one built a single day earlier, CC88189, can be seen upon appointment with... Peter Rice

@Fatih
Remember: prototype, pre-series. Many parts of the car will appear different from what we have come to know. CB57001 and CB00044 are the only 1989 prototypes that have surfaced so far.

The car that you have pictured above is neither of the ones that you are referring to, since the presentation of that green car took place on June 15th 1989 in the Bayernhalle in Munich and was the inaugurating presentation for the 8-series. This was more than a month prior to the first recorded VIN. The car on display was an "improvised" mockup but seemingly ready to drive. Next to the car on the 2nd picture is the then BMW CEO Eberhard von Kuenheim.

revtor
To my knowledge all cars, even the handmade ones receive some kind of "non-removable" number. The convertible & M8 in Munich both have "out of range" prototype numbers not conforming to the known WBA/WBS nomenclature. The convertible has a sharp edged hole where the original VIN used to be which leads to the assumption that this car was built upon the hull of an off-the-shelf E31 and then rebadged.

The situation for CB00044 seems to have been so that the car was given to the University for test purposes and not to be resold or registered. Without that VIN in the shell registration is impossible in Germany. When the car surfaced 3 yrs ago it was about to be dismantled and not much time was taken to identify the differences to a car from series production, mostly for the fact that it was recognized too late that this car was indeed one of a (very early) kind....

Hence CB57001 today represents the only chance to find out what changes from the prototype state of Nov. 1989 were introduced into the series production just a few months later.

I am unable to tell whether that oil catch was forgotten, not yet designed or removed later on. I have now seen though browsing through other pictures of CB00044 that the washer bottle in there is of the kind we all know and distinctively different from CB57001:

Cheers
Reinhard

CC88190 came in a unique combination of Lila Metallic over Lotus white

Apart from rumours there is no definite number for cars altered/tuned by Koenig Specials. As far as I know even the owner of Koenig Specials did not remember the exact figures and had no way to find out what VINs were involved. Same as with Racing Dynamics this is a pretty murky terrain be it for claims of sales or performance figures.

Wikipedia, same as this forum is a community project - this means that basically anyone can add to the wisdom. Why not adding something wrt the KS8?

Cheers
Reinhard